


Post Ictal

by Marie_L



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: First Contact, M/M, Masochism, Nanobots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 07:33:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6973309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First Contact requires nanobot infection for Jim and Bones, with unforeseen consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post Ictal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shopfront](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/gifts).



McCoy flipped open his tricorder for the thousandth time that hour, monitoring the insidious progress of the alien tech deep into Jim's brain. A dozen tiny organic machines, each emitting a neurostimulant or electromagnetic field or a damned _something_ and riding shotgun through Jim's neural tissue, and – Bones had to squelch alarm to wave the tricorder is his direction – his own brain as well. He wasn't the one flopped over unconscious on a writhing alien floor, though, so it seemed like a minor complaint. Jim's head as lolled to one side in McCoy's lap, but the surface of the room they were sitting on roiled underneath the rest of him. Caressing him, either to probe or comfort.

Yet again the infernal machine simply said Jim was asleep. Ordinary REM and dreaming, complete with flickering eyeballs and the usual muscle atonia. They both had a damned speck of a bot sitting in their hypothalami, so why was he awake and Kirk sprawled out like a cat on an afternoon sun porch? Bones could perceive the tech on the edges of his mind, despite a lack of receptors for any sort of direct sensory input. An influence with the gentlest touch, observing, waiting. Perhaps he was there to be a witness.

The mission was ill-conceived from the beginning, but naturally, that wouldn't stop Captain James T. Kirk from blustering in. Normally the Federation had the good sense to keep Kirk away from the more sensitive first contact missions. Random bogies in space? Fine, if they must; technically it was in Starfleet's mission statement. Up and coming planets just on the verge of the great leap from cryo to warp? Eh, the Vulcans were still good for those. But a xenophobic species with enough scary-advanced biomech-tech to turn the Enterprise into a living asteroid-eating space monster? Missions like these were why diplomats were invented as canon fodder, as far as Bones was concerned. He suspected those pencil-pushers – the name stuck, despite the obsolescence of paper – felt the same, given their clucking and squawking over the “sensitivity” of the mission. An expanding young civilization like the Federation needed all the powerful allies it could get.

The aliens themselves, though, had specifically asked for the Enterprise and Kirk. Welcome to the edge of our border, they said, so long as we get a look at your most controversial leader. Word of the ship's exploits had gotten around, apparently, which spoke volumes about the Zvire's unobtrusive spying on the neighborhood, isolationism notwithstanding. They hadn't directly said _prove your worthiness to grovel at our superior feet, humans,_ but that was the gist. James Kirk only, and bring a friend. McCoy had been a little surprised that Jim didn't pick Spock as his plus one, but it turned out Jim's impulsive instincts were dead-on as usual. When getting injected up the wazoo with alien tech, a doctor, not a green-blooded philosophe, was the logical move.

Thus it was the two of them found themselves cocooned in a pulsating pod with warm verdant walls, getting their brains probed and their asses massaged. They still hadn't met any actual Zvire, unless of course the nanobots embedded in their brains _were_ the Zvire, which would give new meaning to "first contact." McCoy just hoped they had a plan for getting the damned things out again, and not that they were expected to sacrifice themselves to the cause or something.

In his lap, Jim's eyes fluttered open. Glassy and grogged, just like a man woken straight from dreaming. “Bones,” he moaned, and the words conveyed uncharacteristic pain. McCoy flipped open his tricorder again, partially to maintain an air of professionalism. “They want something...me...”

“Relax and take it easy for a minute, Jim. Doctor's orders.” The nanos were stimulating his amydala, hypothalamus, and sensory cortex. The activity looking alarmingly like the kind of thing that could cause a seizure, so McCoy decided to take a risk and dose him up with some nadolozapam. Hopefully reducing neuronal activity wouldn't piss the bots off.

“Pain,” Kirk wheezed out. He stiffened for a second, and McCoy held his breath that a generalized seizure could start any second. But then Jim managed to suck in some air, and he seemed to get himself together in some small semblance of control.

McCoy stroked his forehead, willing some comfort into him. Bedside manner, not his forte, but when dealing with suffering he could suck it up and step up. “Yeah, sorry,” he said. “The pain's an illusion being generated in your mind, not coming from the peripheral nerves. Hypospray nirvana won't help here, we'd have to scuttle the mission and bring you back to...”

Already Jim was shaking his head against that thought. “No. They...asked. Made me choose. I chose this.”

“Seriously? Dammit, Jim, when I said you were a glutton for punishment, I didn't mean to take it literally.”

Kirk managed a chuckle at that, and then cut off as his eyes bugged out towards the ceiling.

“What exactly do they want?” McCoy asked. Maybe distraction was one way to get through this, keep him talking. His own mind tugged, as if that were an inappropriate question. The motivation to talk and help and comfort suddenly went down. In a silent eff you to the bots, he forced himself to continue stroking Jim's brow.

“To feel our emotions, and also our control. They think I and, uh, all of humanity, lack discipline. Like a new tasty mind though.”

“Impetuous? Tasty? You? Naaaw.” He paused, then added, “Although in retrospect, volunteering to have your pain centers zapped does seem a little bit impulsive.”

“I can take it. I'm the Captain,” Jim said sarcastically. “Plus it distracts from the rage, and sadness, and...”

“Damned amydala,” Bones muttered. “Good news, at least the frontal lobe's intact. The commander's seat of the brain. You know, your shrunken bit.”

Jim's face contorted in weepiness, then fury, then on another outbreath morphed back into gaspy fear. Not as funny as Bones would like.

“More,” Jim gasped.

“More? What more?”

“More pain. Up and over, only way out.”

“That makes no sense,” Bones complained. “More? You _want_ to cause a seizure? Time to dial it back on the stimulation is my professional opinion.”

“Moooore,” Kirk said, gritting his teeth. “Trust me. Plus: orders. Do it, they're ramping up.”

“Do _what?”_ Bones felt himself unmoored and on repeat. How could he even know if it was Jim talking, and not the alien tech?

“Periphery. Need to feel something real.”

Jim was flush now, shaking in his lap, with an erection that made Bones frown, although he wasn't bothered by it. Hypothalamus? Inappropriate sexual response too? Who knew, it was a messed up soup of overactivation and neurotransmitters swimming in there. In a flash of insight McCoy got it. Reality, something to cling to.

“Where?” he asked quietly. And dammit, Jim merely shrugged. No big deal, torturing a friend.

McCoy slid his hand around from Jim's face to cup the back of his head. Without giving warning, he tightened his grip and viciously twisted the hair within his fist. Jim's eyes popped open at the sensation, and he yanked away in the opposite direction for even more pain.

“A start,” he hissed. “More.”

“I'm telling you right now, there's a limit to this,” McCoy. “Do no harm, remember?”

“Sometimes you gotta cut to save the patient, Doc.”

McCoy paused a moment to consider his options, without letting up on the hair. There were only so many ways of creating pain without causing permanent damage, and he didn't really have the accoutrements for a lot of the good ones. And to hell with something like _spanking._ They needed to be able to walk away from this and still be to look each in the eye, so. He settled on crushing Jim's fingers unexpectedly back, opposite pulsing on the hair, on the theory that any joint damage he could repair later.

“Not enough. Cut. More,” Jim gritted.

“Fine. I'm gonna remind you later, you totally consented to this procedure,” Bones told him. He dropped the limp hand and let his own travel south, regretting even thinking about this next move. Fit the criteria, though; this, absolutely, was going to hurt. He got down to the balls when Jim got wind of what he was about to do. The patient tensed up, which was all the more bad for him. McCoy slammed his hand into Jim's scrotum, eliciting for the first time a genuine scream.

Oddly enough, it was kind of satisfying.

Jim regained some more motor control at that moment, and curled around to clutch himself. McCoy dispassionately scanned him for vascular damage. Nope. Just agony. The tech had stopped its spasm-inducing pulses too. They seemed to be dismantling themselves and disintegrating into component parts, to be swept away like detritus in both of their brains. Test passed, apparently

“M'kay, I think that does it,” Jim said, his voice dripping with exhaustion.

“This isn't the part where I have to cuddle you and tell you you're okay, is it? Because, really, I think it's my turn to cry uncle.”

“Should've brought Spock,” Jim muttered. “He'd cuddle on command.”

“Whatever you've got to tell yourself to get up in the morning, Captain.” He flicked open his tricorder once again, as Jim snorted and leaned back against him, willing relaxation yet again.

  



End file.
